116 réponses à ce sujet

[Fidite Nemini]

I dont understand why Bioware wants to implement that feature again.

Just to artificially extend the playing time?

 

I remember one of the tips for DAI when it was released and people stopped playing it after 2 hours.

 

"Leave the HINTERLANDS!".

 

People just dont want to explore huge maps with static placed NPC's with boring fetch / collect quests. It's so time consuming and boring.

 

 

You assume one of two things:

 

For one, that ME:A exploration is going to be the same bland surface map with nothing to see but a pretty skybox (and really, ME1 had magnificient skyboxes, it's why I loved exploring planets).

Or secondly, that ME:A is going to fill those surface maps with the same bland MMO'ish quests like DAI did.

 

You're only really right with one thing:

 

 

People just dont want to explore huge maps with static placed NPC's with boring fetch / collect quests. It's so time consuming and boring.

 

But exploring beautifully crafted regions filled with story relevant (or merely interesting) sidequests, hidden loot caches or ressources (I rather prefer the DAII mechanic of once found, always available, rather than having to stripmine regions or planets like in DAI or ME2 respectively) you can use for say a crafting or upgrade system?

 

That is something that a lot of people want.

 

 

Likewise, what the Mako offers isn't just exploration. It's also different gameplay. The most recognizable aspect of which would be combat, which would play out distinctively different from the infantry focused action, but not as railroaded as say the ME3 turret sections.

 

Really, at this point NOTHING is known about how BioWare will implement the Mako and how it will handle the exploration.

 

So yeah, whilst I get your dislike for what you apparently assume ME:A Mako is going to be like, it doesn't mean that's how it ends up being.

 

 

Granting, you could argue I'm being unrealistically optimistic with the examples I've given, but my point is, there's no meaning in judging a mechanic that you know nothing more about than it being there and one's only reference points are an eight year old game and a recent installment from a different franchise altogether.

[Zekka]

Are we still going on about this? Bioware had a basic structure of what they wanted to do with the mako since ME1,they just didn't have the resources to do it.

Now that years have passed and I'm sure they know how to handle frostbite 3 and current gen consoles, they can finally make a mass effect game with planets the size of ME1 but with actual variety in it. Hell, they're not the only one that is making or has made an open/ open world game with vehicles in it. Make sure you build the world with vehicular and on foot exploration in mind and make sure the controls are good while having interesting locations, with a reactive AI and good enough quests. 

In a world as large as mass effect's, I'm against only on foot exploration especially when we have so many vehicles laying around.

[MaxQuartiroli]

In my opinion it would not have been very boring.. if it wasn't for those 2/3 montainous planets which were really tiresome beacuse of invisible walls. This is what I'd like to ask to Bioware: don't do invisible walls and let us explore each planet without having to find the right path every single time. Let me climb that mountain from every corner and don't force me to go down when I am about 2 inches from the peak just becuase "it's not the right side"! 

[slimgrin]

If Skyrim did exploration poorly it wouldn't be half as it is popular now. So yeah, look at any TES game. They all do exploration better than Bioware has ever done. 

[Sidney]

I find it interesting that you find DAI and Skyrim to be "too much" since I find them both to be too sparse - but I wager we define finding stuff differently. That said, totally agree.

Well there is sparse as in nothing really of interest each Skyrim and DAI manage that. What they both do do however is have something else on the map all over the place so it is both sparse and cluttered after a sense.

[Zekka]

If Skyrim did exploration poorly it wouldn't be half as it is popular now. So yeah, look at any TES game. They all do exploration better than Bioware has ever done.

Skyrim's mountains were mass effect 1 bad and so was it's implementation of exploration in any way that wasn't on foot. Then you had the loading screens for all those caves and every building. There is no grabbing or climbing animation either.

I'm still not sure how BethSoft makes these open world games for two decades and still stumble upon the same problems.
Bethesda do exploration better than Bioware but I'd rather Bioware take inspiration from Rockstar than Bethesda.

[Giantdeathrobot]

The base concept of exploring around in a vehicle is nice. The new Mad Max game makes it work pretty well.

 

What you need to do is design the world around that. No ridiculously huge and impassable mountains. No totally empty levels with 1 prefabricated building serving as an obvious quest location. More details and variety; these are alien worlds in another galaxy, go nuts! Huge tempests, firestorms, giant animals lazily flying above, Avatar-style floating rocks in the distance, majestic night skies full of distant stars and wierd planets, make us go ''Wow!''.

 

Also implement better driving mechanics, more than one quest per area, and for all that is holy get rid of the one-shot kill Tresher Maws.

[Zekka]

The base concept of exploring around in a vehicle is nice. The new Mad Max game makes it work pretty well.

What you need to do is design the world around that. No ridiculously huge and impassable mountains. No totally empty levels with 1 prefabricated building serving as an obvious quest location. More details and variety; these are alien worlds in another galaxy, go nuts! Huge tempests, firestorms, giant animals lazily flying above, Avatar-style floating rocks in the distance, majestic night skies full of distant stars and wierd planets, make us go ''Wow!''.

Also implement better driving mechanics, more than one quest per area, and for all that is holy get rid of the one-shot kill Tresher Maws.

Keep the thresher maws,but make sure they aren't on every planet we explore.

[Reorte]

Skyrim's mountains were mass effect 1 bad and so was it's implementation of exploration in any way that wasn't on foot. Then you had the loading screens for all those caves and every building. There is no grabbing or climbing animation either.

Mountainous areas generally have quite a bit that's very difficult or impossible to get through. Being able to stroll up in any direction would've been pretty immersion-breaking, and I don't ever remember having too much trouble going around, only if I tried to straightline from A to B. Grabbing or climbing animations would've been good but shouldn't let you get everywhere in a straight line.

[Zekka]

Mountainous areas generally have quite a bit that's very difficult or impossible to get through. Being able to stroll up in any direction would've been pretty immersion-breaking, and I don't ever remember having too much trouble going around, only if I tried to straightline from A to B. Grabbing or climbing animations would've been good but shouldn't let you get everywhere in a straight line.

Climbing mountains to reach an invisible wall was my main problem, especially when you saw how it liked in third person. It was even worse whenever you climbed a mountain with a horse and it looked like the game was glitched out.

I mean grabbing things like a ledge to climb up, a lot of third person open world games already have this. If you jump and there's something your character can grab to reach higher then they should do it

[DarkKnightHolmes]

Just take the Batmobile from Arkham Knight, Bioware!

[SlottsMachine]

Exploring with the Mako was the best thing about ME 1.

 

 

This. But then I really enjoy space scenery, and the feeling of the vastness of it all.

[Fidite Nemini]

If Skyrim did exploration poorly it wouldn't be half as it is popular now. So yeah, look at any TES game. They all do exploration better than Bioware has ever done.

 

They already tried and ended up with DAI, a.k.a. "LEAVE THE HINTERLANDS!" and boring MMO'ish sidequests.

[Chealec]

It certainly did. In a way, exploration in ME1 was like a really bad film, but every 10 minutes you could take a still that would be very beautiful. 

 

Yup... I don't think ME1 has aged too badly really; granted the weather's not dynamic and some of the landscape textures are a bit iffy (and don't tessellate brilliantly) but you can still get some nice screenies.

 

http://images.akamai...3D36DCCBC61401/

 

http://images.akamai...0570AA6F0EE722/

 

... even the asset re-use only niggles me a little (the mines and pirate bases mainly) but I sort of shrug it off as it's modular "shake 'n' bake" prefab junk ... the "fantasy" setting of DA:2 actually made the asset re-use a lot worse for me.

[Chealec]

...

 

Really, at this point NOTHING is known about how BioWare will implement the Mako and how it will handle the exploration.

...

 

Well, apart from the fact that the new Mako doesn't have guns... we know that much; well unless they're bolted on as an upgrade option we know it'll be customisable to some extent too.

 

Although "know" is a somewhat flexible term here - BioWare have said this much but that doesn't mean it won't be subject to change in the next 18 months or so.

[In Exile]

Skyrim really feels a bit "small world" at times, when you keep stumbling on things in a much shorter walk than it takes me to get to the shops. It's obviously a balance (taking several real days to do a journey wouldn't make good gameplay, not to mention require huge amounts of development) and Skyrim didn't do too bad a job of hiding that IMO.

It feels small to me because everything in it is absurdly tiny. "Cities" are barely villages. I don't have much experience with wilderness - I hate it - so I can't say very much about what it would be like IRL. But the content I value - quests, character interaction, moral choices - is very sparse to nonexistent in Skyrim and TES generally.

[Dean_the_Young]

It feels small to me because everything in it is absurdly tiny. "Cities" are barely villages. I don't have much experience with wilderness - I hate it - so I can't say very much about what it would be like IRL. But the content I value - quests, character interaction, moral choices - is very sparse to nonexistent in Skyrim and TES generally.

 

Eh. That's not wrong, but it's not quite fair either: any open-world game that tried to pull  real-life scale for settlements would be so large to be boring (and unfun). If you don't twist the sense of scale, you either have small maps or big maps with most of the terrain off-limits- and in pretty much all games, the bigger the map the sparser the content.

[GreyLycanTrope]

Mako had potential, the mechanics certainly needed fine tuning but driving exploring planets was actually fun for me.

[Zekka]

Eh. That's not wrong, but it's not quite fair either: any open-world game that tried to pull  real-life scale for settlements would be so large to be boring (and unfun). If you don't twist the sense of scale, you either have small maps or big maps with most of the terrain off-limits- and in pretty much all games, the bigger the map the sparser the content.

GTA V doesn't really suffer from this. I think the content to size ratio is quite good for a game set in one city.

[In Exile]

Eh. That's not wrong, but it's not quite fair either: any open-world game that tried to pull  real-life scale for settlements would be so large to be boring (and unfun). If you don't twist the sense of scale, you either have small maps or big maps with most of the terrain off-limits- and in pretty much all games, the bigger the map the sparser the content.

 

You're right. I think the only way you can do an open world game is to commit, completely, to one design or the other: wilderness with small villages, apart from one substantial hub, or a few major cities. I like two open world games (that I've played): TW3, and AC2 (+expansions).  

[CuriousArtemis]

I think where DAI messed up is in not having NG+. For that initial run through, you really do need all those fetch quest to build up your experience and what not. But then when you want to play the game a second time, perhaps just to make different choices, it becomes tedious to have to do all those fetch quests again.

 

One good thing about ME series has been that there's NG+, or rather, that you can import an old character and not have to worry about building him/her up again. So you can enjoy the plot-related stuff and not have to do fetch quests. 

 

That said, I did truly enjoy the Mako quests in ME1 the first couple times I played the game (and agree about the beautiful skylines), AND I even enjoyed planet scanning in ME3 the first couple times (I liked reading about each planet). But for playthroughs after that, I didn't do any of that.

[Nayawk]

I loved the Mako, as others have said it really added to the immersion and the idea of space being, well space.  

 

I also played on PC and had none of the control issues people talk about. 

[Former_Fiend]

There's an artform to making exploration in videogames fun. It comes from tapping into the player's sense of discovery; they want to find out what's over that hill, they want to find a new and exciting adventure around every bend. 

 

I don't think Bioware's mastered this art yet. There wasn't as much of a wow factor with the exploration element of DAI.

 

This is something I think Bethesda definitely does better than Bioware because with games like Skyrim and Fallout, I wanted to explore every inch of those maps because I knew there was always going to be an adventure waiting for me, and if there wasn't, then at least there'd be something pretty cool for me to look at. 

[countofhell]

Driving the Mako was similar as driving in Terep2, it's not bad at all :

 

Only in ME1 i like those deserted planets, they are scary and mystique, specifically the assignment with Durand where the Rachni attacks :

 

 

Otherwise doing useless fetch quests is boring of course, however driving and fireing with Mako is cool.

 

Mako can be very important for otherwise impossible to reach places.

[KaiserShep]

I didn't think exploring in ME1 was all that terrible. Putting aside how badly it clashed with the main objective of the game, I think the biggest problem was that more often than not, points of interest were nothing special. An anomaly on the map would just be a fallen probe filled with junk, a prothean pyramid with a data drive or matriarch writings stuffed in a lockbox. 

 

I like the idea of coming across an abandoned settlement that suffered some sort of calamity that we can investigate, or something/someone sets a trap for us. If there are NPC's we can interact with, interesting information we can find, and perhaps more than one way we can go about completing the mission, it'll probably be at least a little enjoyable. To that end, I do hope that non-combat endings can happen again, sort of like Father Kyle.